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£150 for a quiet card

tindale

tindale

tindale

Associate
Joined
12 Jan 2004
Posts
278
Location
Bicester, Oxon
Hello All,
In the past couple of weeks I've had to return an OCUK 8800GT 512 as the fan was constantly at 100%, and all controls were disabled in Rivatuner, Ntune etc, regardless of drivers (in Vista 64).

I read about a few problems with 8800GT fans, and was also dissapointed to read that it didn't hardware decode HD video, so I decided to go for a powercolour 3870 512, only to find that these are permanently at 100% fan speed, and its impossible to change it so this had to go back too

Before I go and spend any more money on returning cards, can anyone recomend a card in this price range which definitely reduces its fan speed when not under load (or at least allows me to do it through Rivatuner?). My machine works as a media centre, and I don't want it to sound like Hurrican Katrina is stuck inside somewhere whilst watching TV.

Thanks
 
Something is wrong there, the 3870 512's are not all permanently set to 100%, did you try the latest drivers from ATi's site? GT being at 100% too, sounds like you were using dodgy drivers, they are usually at 29-30% all the time, I use 40% in game though, prevent from crashing.
 
well you have mentioned the ones i was gonna tell you

to be honest my leadtek 8800gt 512 is great - it runs at 20% or thereabouts in idle
and was at 70% after two hours of crysis
and that is with a mild overclock

i honestly dont know what to advise you
with the budget you have given, you gould try and find and old gts but that would give you a performance hit

are you sure you are doing everything right - it sounds a bit suss that you have 100% fan speed on both card brands - its got to mean that it isnt the gpu causing the problem

could it be your other hardware
have you checked your bios settings?
what mobo is it running on?

only thing i can advise is one of the silent passive cooled GTs
 
I'm not sure about the 8800GT, but as I was quite keen on hardware HD decoding I didn't pursue it too far, and decided to go ATI instead.

However, on for the powercolor 3870 with the Flower type fan, I've read in several places that as its mildly overclocked powercolor decided to fix the fan at 100%, and there's not BIOS available that'll help (some think that the power comes directly from the 12v rail). I toyed with the idea of a fanmate, but I really don't want to have to remember to turn it up before gaming.

If everyone's sure that 3870s do allow the fans to adjust as standard I'll probably go and purchase a sapphire, or even the OCUK value model. I don't game at more than 1366x768 as I'm on an LCD TV, so I'll live with it not being up to 8800 standards, but I didn't want to have to send another one back because of the noise (great as OCUK are, I'm sure they'll loose patience eventually!!)
 
I put an Accelero S1 on my (standard Powercolor) 3870. Totally silent and excellent cooler - if it'll fit in your media centre case and there's enough airflow.

On the standard model, the fans do adjust but are typically running at speeds that are too slow for effective cooling. There are BIOS's available that fix this, or some of the OC tools can control the fan - not sure which ones since I don't use them.
 
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get a HIS ATI Radeon ICEQ3 HD3870. The card is silent, i have not messed with the fan settings because it is sow quiet, HIS ICEQ3 technology is really cool. Also the even better thing is you can get one from Overclockers for only £152. I bought mine from overclockers and am going to in the near future, buy a second one and setup crossfire.
 
ArcAne151 said:
get a HIS ATI Radeon ICEQ3 HD3870. The card is silent, i have not messed with the fan settings because it is sow quiet, HIS ICEQ3 technology is really cool. Also the even better thing is you can get one from Overclockers for only £152. I bought mine from overclockers and am going to in the near future, buy a second one and setup crossfire.
Click to expand...

I agree I have the ICEQ3 cooler on my 1900xt and it's still the quietest thing in my case after all these years:cool:. I feel like never buying a card without it again
 
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